The mystery of Austria's silence over dual citizens held in Iran

Six years ago on New Year’s Day, an Iranian-Austrian IT businessman said goodbye to his wife and three children and boarded a flight from Vienna to Tehran via Istanbul. Kamran Ghaderi had been due to return five or six days later, but he was arrested and has spent six years in Evin prison in Tehran.

- Patrick Wintour 

In October 2016, he was sentenced to 10 years for spying for a foreign country at a trial during which neither he nor his lawyer were able to say more than two words. His sentencing was based on a confession he gave under what his wife, Harika, says was torture, in his belief she might be in danger. No written judgment has ever been given to his family.

“The effect on our three children – that is the most painful aspect of this story,” says Harika in an interview. “I cannot comfort them. My daughters were nine and 12 years old. Now they are 15 and 18. Our boy was two years old and now he is eight. He does not remember his father .”

Harika lost weight until she became “a skeleton”, and despite taking pills found it difficult to sleep for more than two hours at a stretch.